Can it happen in an EU member state that the government cuts off independent media and NGOs from the funds they need to operate, because of what they think and write? This question was posed by the Hungarian fact-checking platform Lakmusz after the draft law which they deem “most serious attack to date on the remaining independent institutions in Hungary” was proposed in the Hungarian parliament.
The newly proposed bill, officially called ‘transparency in public life’, was tabled in the Hungarian parliament on 13 May and expected to be voted on by MPs in the first half of June. Lakmusz warns that the law is neatly fitting into a series of stigmatizing “foreign agent laws, giving the government the power to draw up a list of “foreign funded” organizations it considers to be a threat to Hungary’s sovereignty, by an arbitrary decision that cannot be challenged in court. Inclusion on the list would entail severe financial and other restrictions.
According to Lakmusz, the Hungarian Tax Authority would, among other things, monitor the bank accounts of listed organizations with the assistance of banks, investigate their foreign transactions and ultimately block access to foreign funds if it finds that they are ‘used to influence public life’. Existing foreign contracts of listed entities would become, by law, impossible to fulfil and would need to be terminated.
Lakmusz, Hungary’s first and only dedicated fact-checking site with a considerable reach, was launched as part of the Hungarian Digital Media Observatory (HDMO) with the support of the European Commission in early 2022. Since then, Lakmusz has published more than 800 articles. Thanks to their collaboration with 444.hu, our most read articles have reached more than 50,000 readers each.
Lakmusz stress that their work is public, transparent and impartial. “Our donors have never had any influence on the content of our articles or our editorial decisions,” stated Lakmusz newsroom team. They add that as a member of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) and the European Fact-Checking Standards Network (EFCSN), they work with a transparent and audited methodology.
The Hungarian fact-checking platform warned that if the law is applied in such a way that they are cut off from all grant funding already won as well as from future grants, the very existence of Lakmusz will be jeopardized.
“Our articles are available free of charge, we do not display advertisements on our site, and as a media independent of the government we can hardly hope to receive domestic funding. In our case, therefore, the withdrawal of foreign funding would mean losing 100% of our income,” Lakmusz warns.
Lakmusz, togather with other Hungarian media outlets and civil society organizations, called for urgent reaction from the European institutions.
“We expect European decision-makers, especially the European Commission, to use all available means to ensure that this law will not be adopted or, if it is adopted, that it does not prevent independent media and NGOs from operating. The Commission has the possibility to seek an interim measure before the Court of Justice of the EU to suspend the law should it enter into force, or to seek ways to further support Hungarian independent media and civil society,” Lakmusz stated in their announcement.
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